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The recent racial rant by an official of the Bedfordview licensing department reported in the media made me think. Read the full article.

During my presentations on Cyber Security and Privacy, I repeatedly emphasize that the world wide web does not forget. While there remains a perception that for example, social media posts may be deleted and they will be gone forever, is simply a very fake sense of assurance. The information resides on a server somewhere and while there are strategies to remove data from the web, they are not fool proof for one. Common technology sense does tell us, if we replace anything offending posted, with something else it should disappear. Yes maybe, it is yet to be proven this is a fait accompli. Even worse, an offending post is left to linger longer, it is indexed by other platforms and it spreads with very real purpose with very little human intervention.

Much has been discussed and written about online evidence and undoubtedly, more will follow. While this article will add to this running debate, the intention is to provide an overview to the online investigator to evaluate their own position for the ultimate goal of the utilisation of their “evidence” albeit in OSINT or forensically.

We have had some questions about joining this site and the requirement to have passwords for this site and the training site.

The OSINT-i1 site is hosted on our servers and the training is hosted on thinkific’s servers.

The reason we require login to the OSINT-i1 site is that the tools are here to assist our members with their OSINT investigations, they take time to develop and research. Importantly, it is also to prevent search engines such as google, indexing the forum posing a privacy issue. Also, you will gain the benefit of special announcements such as for free webinars dealing with specific OSINT issues. The forum while case details are discouraged, is also for our members to feel free to ask unique questions, gain support during training sessions and for everyone to share knowledge about their OSINT experience.

The login to the training is for each individual to enrol as a student to each course.

We have not been able to automate the password generation and login process between the 2 sites (passwords are also encrypted on both sites and we do not have access to them) therefore, you will be required to do so yourself. If you make use of a browser extension (chrome and firefox) such as lastpass (free with subscription options) or keepass (free), it will automate this process for you.

Cape Town South Africa has been in the midst of a serious drought which is so serious, recently the authorities increased the water restriction to level 6b.

Attached is an OSINT reportrelating to suspected water abuse by the owners /caretakers of one residential home.

The purpose of this OSINT exercise is to demonstrate its effectiveness with carefully selected open sources of information followed by the application of investigation techniques and analysis to produce the OSINT product ultimately. During the collection phase, Hunchly was used for maintaining a diary of the investigation and a record. This report is also attached.